What was the last film you watched?

[Andrew]

Her

Quite simply brilliant.

Not in a 'change your life' kind of a way, nor is it a challenging or deeply profound watch (though it does have some interesting ponders), but as a touchingly light and highly creative comedy. But then we've come to expect a high degree of near off-the-wall originality from Spike Jonze.

Highly recommended.

[spindrift]

Sunshine on Leith.

Sheer unadulterated joy, just brilliant, I love the Welsh.

[Jakob]

Europa Report

Re-hashing of parts of Clarke's Odyssey series in a Defying Gravity-esque modern realistic style.  They appeared to have done their homework properly, especially with regard to Europa itself.  There's a conspicuous amount of NASA in the credits.

Slow-paced SF with actual science in it.  Best thing since Pioneer One.   

Hmm. I found it rather short on science.
-The first EVA trip: They're working on a revolving surface and not having to hold them selves on?.
-Only 20minute oxygen margin?.
- A tear that size on the glove is not catastrophic.
- And no, he could not survive 'popping out of his suit and into the airlock'.
- deceleration to establish orbit: I forget how many months (14?)...but they were going *fast* if we're talking months rather than years and Europa's gravity field is rather small, so it would be a very long burn in order to slow down. More realistic would be to use Jupiter gravity field to assist with the acceleration and then sling out to Europa.

Then from the moment they land, it turns into a dumb pseudo horror movie.
Nice science things included the watershield and dumping it, although the timeframe in which that happens is rather improbable.

I did like the use of 'built in' cameras for the majority of the shots, although the crappy framerate effect on some of them was silly in the era of $300 GoPros.

[Andrew]

Inside Llewyn Davis

A lovely film and bound to be one of my long term faves.

I like the Coen brothers... but not all of their stuff. I didn't enjoy 'Big Lebowski' nor 'No Country for Old Men' (I found the nature of the violence disturbing), so I was uncertain what Llewyn Davis might offer.

It's a gentle story well told. It's apparently based on - or inspired by - a real folk singer, whose name evades me at the moment. I'm sure there's some mythological reference intended with the cat, or a significance of some sort, but that bypassed me. No worries as I doubt it's essential to get it.

What remains could be seen as a slightly cynical view of talent v money, real v sham. I began by disliking Davis, he used people because he was an 'artist', but as the story progresses I began to warm to his plight. He considers himself real, genuine - in both experience and desire. This is contrasted with, amongst others,  the matching fishermen's' cable knit sweaters of a 'look the part' trio - they've probably never been near a boat whereas Davis is a card carrying merchant seaman. Davis' final performance (of the film) is full  of gut belief, but he's somewhat unappreciated beyond the confines of this poky club. He's doomed to repeat the cycle and never find success in his terms.

And who's the act the follows him? Why, I'm sure that's meant to be Bob Dylan!

'Inside Llewyn Davis' is a well made film, well shot and acted. John Goodman makes an inspired appearance as heroin addicted jazzman,  and amusingly disses folk and Davis generally, seemingly to alleviate his own boredom. The guy who plays Davis (again, the name's gone) is a singer turned actor and he owns the role, a truly engaging and committed performance. And Justin Timberlake shows a similar - though less complete - performance.  What's her name, the English girl currently garnering a name for herself, gives a solid and believable performance too - as I say, great acting all around.

Again, a film I'd recommend.

(Btw, I'm employing a new tactic for selecting films to watch and - so far - it's working!)

[Kim]

Europa Report

Re-hashing of parts of Clarke's Odyssey series in a Defying Gravity-esque modern realistic style.  They appeared to have done their homework properly, especially with regard to Europa itself.  There's a conspicuous amount of NASA in the credits.

Slow-paced SF with actual science in it.  Best thing since Pioneer One.   

Hmm. I found it rather short on science.

I was thinking in terms of the planetary stuff, rather than the space travel, though they got more of that right than the average Hollywood effort.  (Gravity is clearly well above average.)

-The first EVA trip: They're working on a revolving surface and not having to hold them selves on?.

I thought they were working on a stationary surface, occasionally shown from a camera on the revolving section.

-Only 20minute oxygen margin?.
- A tear that size on the glove is not catastrophic.

Agreed.  Well, it might be if you've only got a 20 minute margin.   

- And no, he could not survive 'popping out of his suit and into the airlock'.

Survivable or not, it's pretty much impossible to "pop out" of a space suit.   

(click to show/hide)

More importantly, why wouldn't they be tethered at all times?  That's ridiculous.  As is the presence of hydrazine in the AE35 unit a communications panel, for that matter.  If contamination with nasty substances was even a possibility, they'd have allowed enough time margin to sit in the airlock and wait for it to evaporate.

- deceleration to establish orbit: I forget how many months (14?)...but they were going *fast* if we're talking months rather than years and Europa's gravity field is rather small, so it would be a very long burn in order to slow down. More realistic would be to use Jupiter gravity field to assist with the acceleration and then sling out to Europa.

I thought they did swing round Jupiter?  Though, TBH, all details of propulsion were conspicuously handwaved.  The ship didn't appear to have any significant volume dedicated to fuel or water shields.  (And while we're at it, the solar array was far too small.)

I did like the use of 'built in' cameras for the majority of the shots, although the crappy framerate effect on some of them was silly in the era of $300 GoPros.

I thought the 'crappy framerate effect' was supposed to be an artefact of camera malfunction or $spoilers-related data corruption.  They did at least avoid gratuitous analogue video noise (though admittedly that's something which is alive and well on footage of real spacewalks).


That we're nitpicking these things at all shows that they'd made a half-decent effort to be realistic.

[L CC]

Inside Llewyn Davis

It's a gentle story well told. It's apparently based on - or inspired by - a real folk singer, whose name evades me at the moment. I'm sure there's some mythological reference intended with the cat, or a significance of some sort, but that bypassed me. No worries as I doubt it's essential to get it.

What remains could be seen as a slightly cynical view of talent v money, real v sham. I began by disliking Davis, he used people because he was an 'artist', but as the story progresses I began to warm to his plight. He considers himself real, genuine - in both experience and desire. This is contrasted with, amongst others,  the matching fishermen's' cable knit sweaters of a 'look the part' trio - they've probably never been near a boat whereas Davis is a card carrying merchant seaman. Davis' final performance (of the film) is full  of gut belief, but he's somewhat unappreciated beyond the confines of this poky club. He's doomed to repeat the cycle and never find success in his terms.

And who's the act the follows him? Why, I'm sure that's meant to be Bob Dylan!

'Inside Llewyn Davis' is a well made film, well shot and acted. John Goodman makes an inspired appearance as heroin addicted jazzman,  and amusingly disses folk and Davis generally, seemingly to alleviate his own boredom. The guy who plays Davis (again, the name's gone) is a singer turned actor and he owns the role, a truly engaging and committed performance. And Justin Timberlake shows a similar - though less complete - performance.  What's her name, the English girl currently garnering a name for herself, gives a solid and believable performance too - as I say, great acting all around.

Again, a film I'd recommend.

I'd agree with all that.
An evening well spent.
(Oscar Isaac is the hero, Carey Mulligan the girl).
It wasn't what we expected- the trailer made it seem funnier.

[Jakob]

(click to show/hide)

More importantly, why wouldn't they be tethered at all times?  That's ridiculous.  As is the presence of hydrazine in the AE35 unit a communications panel, for that matter.  If contamination with nasty substances was even a possibility, they'd have allowed enough time margin to sit in the airlock and wait for it to evaporate.

Quite. They're going to a planet (ok, moon) with suspected organic lifeforms and they have no (de)contamination procedures?.

I thought they did swing round Jupiter?  Though, TBH, all details of propulsion were conspicuously handwaved.  The ship didn't appear to have any significant volume dedicated to fuel or water shields.  (And while we're at it, the solar array was far too small.)

They do get props for actually having watershields. Can't recall ever seeing that in a space movie.

I'm gonna have to replicate this in KSP this weekend

[tiermat]

Got half way through Seven Psychopaths on Wednesday night.

This time I actually get it, unlike the last time when I got about 10 minutes in and went "Meh"

[Andrew]

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Just watch it! It's magical (if watched as a fairy tale)... and there's a stunning performance by the young girl, she must be all of 5 years old.

[Ruth]

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Just watch it! It's magical (if watched as a fairy tale)... and there's a stunning performance by the young girl, she must be all of 5 years old.

+1.  That kid is fabulous.

[Jakob]

Hunger Games Part 2. Had a couple of hours to kill near one of the cinemas and that was the only one that fitted the timing.
I read the first book and saw the first movie and wasn't really planning to watch/read any more of it.
Hate: The love triangle. Why is it that any movie with a teenage(ish) girl lead needs to be flip-flopping between 2 suitors?. Several moments were straight out of Twilight.
Major logic fail when they were spooling out the wire.

(click to show/hide)

The wire comes off the spool!. If anything gets stuck it's on the spool, not upstream!!.

I did like the build up to the third book and I may actually just read that.

[Ruth]

About Time.

Another piece of Richard Curtis formulaic crap.  I hope I don't get to like this one, like I did Love Actually.  Preachy and annoying.  Couple of good songs though.  A Curtis film is nothing without the music, which is always perfect.

Bill Nighy's in it, but even that doesn't make this any good.

[T42]

Alice in den Städten by Wim Wenders. Thought it was going to be dead boring at first but it was quite engaging.

[Andrew]

Another piece of Richard Curtis formulaic crap. 

I watched 4 Weddings the other night... dear lord it had aged, and was bloody awful. It must have caught the mood at the time, or maybe I'm being revisionist, but it really isn't a good film. If  fact, if you're going to be overly serious, it's offensively crap. And, imho anyway, Curtis films didn't get any better.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

The Railway Man. 

[Jaded]

Hugo in 3D

Apart from some gross crossover, it was much fun.

[Andrew]

The Intouchables

This had been on my shelf for a whle, waiting for the mood to grab me. As a rule I stear away from potentially overly schmaltz films as I don't like being told when and how to feel good. I shouldn't have feared nor waited so long.

This is an excellent film. Well acted, touching without overdoing it (though it did teter dangrously close on ocassion) and well made. I'll watch again.

[CAMRAMan]

Free Birds. Don't ask.

[spindrift]

The Intouchables

This had been on my shelf for a whle, waiting for the mood to grab me. As a rule I stear away from potentially overly schmaltz films as I don't like being told when and how to feel good. I shouldn't have feared nor waited so long.

This is an excellent film. Well acted, touching without overdoing it (though it did teter dangrously close on ocassion) and well made. I'll watch again.

Great film, and the wonderful François Cluzet is very good in Tell No One. (his wife is brutally murdered, he slowly recovers and rebuilds his life, then eight years later gets an email that shows she's still alive..)

[tiermat]

About Time.

Another piece of Richard Curtis formulaic crap.  I hope I don't get to like this one, like I did Love Actually.  Preachy and annoying.  Couple of good songs though.  A Curtis film is nothing without the music, which is always perfect.

Bill Nighy's in it, but even that doesn't make this any good.

Whenever I see a pants Richard Curtis film, for some reason I just have to watch "Brassed Off", which reminds me that the UK film industry has managed to turn out a good* movie in the last X years.

*As in a movie that can make me laugh and cry, in equal measure.  A good story line is a must, too.

[spindrift]

Philomena. Best film I've seen this year.

[Jakob]

Rush. Being a F1 fanatic, I had low expectations for this, but it was actually good!. (Apart from Brands Hatch being used in just about every shot).
I was expecting it to be very pro-Hunt and somewhat anti-Lauda, but it was far more nuanced than that.

[Pickled Onion]

Rush. Being a F1 fanatic, I had low expectations for this, but it was actually good!. (Apart from Brands Hatch being used in just about every shot).
I was expecting it to be very pro-Hunt and somewhat anti-Lauda, but it was far more nuanced than that.

I had fairly low expectations for this too, but for the reason I have no interest in F1 and have no knowlege of it whatsoever apart from having heard of Hunt and Lauda.

It really is pretty good.

[Wascally Weasel]

Rush. Being a F1 fanatic, I had low expectations for this, but it was actually good!. (Apart from Brands Hatch being used in just about every shot).
I was expecting it to be very pro-Hunt and somewhat anti-Lauda, but it was far more nuanced than that.

I had fairly low expectations for this too, but for the reason I have no interest in F1 and have no knowlege of it whatsoever apart from having heard of Hunt and Lauda.

It really is pretty good.

It was pretty good I thought too and gave an interesting portrait of Lauda – quite sympathetic and balanced.  It had strong echoes of Senna, particularly the driver conferences.

[mattc]

Overall Rush was a very good film.


_{(You wouldn't have noticed the glaring flaw at its heart if you knew nothing about the real relationship between Hunt & Lauda. I'm almost jealous! )}

Already discussed a few pages back https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=6884.msg1564461#msg1564461

(I finally watched Senna at christmas. Very different films, very different qualities - I recommend both. )